


Flirting Under Fire

by Scrawlers



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Battle Couple, Bom!Lotor, Fluff, Humor, M/M, battles and bants, there's some violence and a mention of blood but nothing too bad I don't think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 09:31:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14746286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrawlers/pseuds/Scrawlers
Summary: Their mission objective was to infiltrate an Empire carrier ship, download data onto a jump drive, and then get out before anyone noticed they were there. To their credit, the first half was a success. It was during the second half that things went awry, and that was onlypartiallybecause of the flirting.





	Flirting Under Fire

“Well,” Lotor said dryly, “so much for our original plan of remaining undetected.” 

Keith huffed a sharp exhale through his teeth as blaster fire continued to erupt over head, sparks flying every time a shot connected with the wall just behind them. Of course one of the very few missions Kolivan authorized him and Lotor to undertake without supervision had to go wrong. Of course they had to get caught despite taking every precaution imaginable to make sure they wouldn’t. Keith had done his due diligence; he had poured over the carrier ship’s schematics with Vidor, and had specifically chosen to use the information terminal in one of the storage rooms to lessen the chances they’d be compromised. But no,  _of course_ a sentry bot had to choose  _that moment_ to scope out the room. It couldn’t have waited an extra ten minutes for Lotor to finish downloading the data they’d gone to retrieve on the data drive, oh no. It just  _had_ to check the room  _right then_. He and Lotor had been forced to duck behind storage crates when the sentry had opened fire, and that was where they were stuck now.

Keith ran his tongue along his teeth as he pulled one of his knives from his belt.

“Right,” he said. “New plan.” 

The sentry was firing continuously, apparently programmed to fire until it hit, but there were little breaks in the blasts. Despite his anger, Keith had counted them:  _Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat._ A small, brief break after three shots. Keith squeezed the hilt of his blade, and as soon as that small, brief break came, he bolted up and over the storage crates and let his knife fly.

_Kr-CHK!_

His knife struck home, embedded in the sentry bot’s throat, sparks and wires springing from the point of impact. But Keith didn’t stop; the moment he let his blade fly he threw himself forward in a front handspring, and kicked the bot hard in the chest. They both went down in a tumble, a rough collision of flesh, bone, and metal, and the moment they were on the floor he kicked the gun out of the bot’s hand, and used his own hands to rip the wiring from the bot’s throat.

The bot struggled for only a second more before it went limp, eyelights dim. Keith breathed a sight of relief, and tossed the wiring to the side.

“Well, that was  _quite_ impressive.” 

Keith turned back as he pushed himself to his feet, and felt his heart jolt a little as he met Lotor’s eyes. Lotor was grinning, and Keith couldn’t help smiling a little himself, even as he rubbed a hand against the back of his neck.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you the plan first,” he said.

“No need to apologize. It gave me the opportunity to observe you in action. Your form is exquisite, did you know that?”

If heat had spread across the back of Keith’s neck when Lotor had called him impressive, it was nothing compared to the warmth that flooded his cheeks now. His mouth opened before his brain figured out what he wanted to say, and as he gaped at Lotor, Lotor’s grin grew. Keith closed his mouth, jammed his knife back into its holster, and—not wanting to be left standing there like a gaping idiot for  _too_ long—finally managed to say, “I didn’t—It wasn’t anything that special. Nothing compared to what yo—”

Keith cut off as a pulsing,  _blaring_ alarm rent the air, red lights flashing from small bulbs positioned along the ceiling. On instinct, Keith had turned his eyes to the lights, but when he looked back at Lotor, he found that Lotor was staring at the sentry bot. Keith looked back down at it, and finally noticed a tiny, red light blinking on and off from the plate in the center of the bot’s chest. 

“It’s connected to the ship’s security system,” Lotor explained, voice tense. “It no doubt has a slight delay to allow for accidents, but since we didn’t deactivate the security protocols, it has now notified everyone on board that there has been a breach.”

“Okay,” Keith said, and when their eyes met again, he added, “Wanna get out of here?”

Lotor flashed a smirk. “Absolutely.”

Agents of the Blade of Marmora were trained in stealth, and both Keith and Lotor were no exception. But stealth only worked  _prior_ to being discovered. Once the alarm had sounded and Empire soldiers were pouring in from every end of the corridor, there were no longer any opportunities to sneak around.

The moment Keith and Lotor exited the storage room, they were surrounded on all sides. Even if the plan had gone beyond awry, Keith still remembered the way to the pod bay, and therefore their getaway ship. Unfortunately, getting there meant plowing through the mix of Empire soldiers and bots that rushed forward to stop them, and Keith gritted his teeth as he pulled his sword from his belt, Lotor doing the same beside him.

“Let’s make this quick,” he said.

Keith charged down the corridor to the left, skirting to the side to throw off the soldiers’ aim, and barrelled straight into the opposition. It wasn’t graceful, and it definitely wasn’t—what was the word Lotor had used? Oh, right—it wasn’t  _exquisite_ , either. But it got the job done. Keith slammed the hilt of his sword into the exposed part of a soldier’s neck—the little exposed sliver of flesh where his helmet  _should_ have connected with his armor—and dropped him, unconscious, to the floor. A sentry bot raised his gun, and Keith slashed his luxite blade in a sharp motion that dropped both hand and gun to the floor, the bot staring dumbly at the stub where its hand used to be. This was enough to get him to the end of the corridor, the majority of his enemies behind him, and when Keith looked back—

Lotor had called  _him_ “exquisite?”

Keith wouldn’t use a word like that, normally, but he felt it fitting now. Lotor deftly ducked under an Empire soldier’s swing and spun—actually  _spun_ —his sword in his hand before he brought it up in a sharp arc. The flat of his blade crashed against the Empire soldier’s head, no doubt sending blinding,  _ringing_ pain through his skull, and as the soldier stumbled, Lotor twirled his sword again, a split second before he brought it up in a vertical slice that—judging from the splash of blood and the soldier’s yell of pain—severed numerous tendons in the soldier’s shoulder.

Lotor wasted no time. The second the soldier fell back (others rushing forward from down the hall), he turned to back to Keith and started running with him down the corridor again. And as they ran, Keith shook his head and said, “See, that’s what I was saying before.”

Lotor cast him a side glance. “What?”

“You make that look like art. It’s—you’re awesome.”

Lotor’s eyes widened, and it might have been Keith’s imagination, but he thought Lotor’s cheeks looked a little darker. He grinned as Lotor looked away, and as they bolted around another corridor, toward the lifts at the far end of the hall, Lotor regained his composure.

“I thank you for the compliment,” he said, “but if you’re attempting to discredit your own ability, I assure you that you’ll find it impossible. Our styles may differ, but what you’re able to accomplish is remarkable. I’ve never seen a person fight more magnificently than you.”

Keith snorted. “Have you ever looked in a mirror?”

“Not while fighting, no.”

“That’s not—!” 

Once again Keith was interrupted, though this time it was because of the lift doors opening before they reached them, soldiers (way too many to be crammed in such a small elevator) pouring out to greet them. Keith looked back over his shoulder and saw that they hadn’t shaken their pursuit, either. Once again they were surrounded on all sides, and this time they’d have to fight to win. There was no way they could keep everyone else out of the lift without at least knocking them out first.

Keith released another sharp sigh before he asked, “Ready to do this?”

“Absolutely,” Lotor said, and he twirled his sword again. It amazed Keith how he never felt bored of seeing that. He felt he could watch it fifty times on loop. “After all, you’re by my side.”

Keith rolled his eyes to try and hide the flippy feeling in his stomach as Lotor said that. “That’s my line,” he said. “Can’t really think of a better partner than the guy who can fly through a sun and come out the other side.” 

“I can,” Lotor said, and when Keith looked over in question, it was to find Lotor grinning at him again, his head inclined just enough to indicate Keith himself.

Once again Keith’s cheeks felt hot, and he knew it had nothing to do with the exertion of running and fighting in small corridors. He raised his sword to block a strike from one of the Empire soldiers from the elevator as Lotor did the same with one of the soldier from the other side of the hall.

“You’re unbelievable,” Keith said, as he shoved the Empire soldier back. He swung his sword to smash the flat of it against the side of a sentry bot’s head, and the force of the blow separated the head from the body entirely and sent it clattering across the floor.

“In Earth slang, is ‘unbelievable’ good or bad?” Lotor asked, as he twirled his sword before he rammed it through the chest of another bot.

Lotor had, without missing a beat, managed to turn Keith’s compliments right back on him. He seemed to take amusement in seeing Keith get flustered (which Keith couldn’t really say was below the belt, given his  _own_ amusement at seeing  _Lotor_  flustered), and he had done all of this while they were trying to escape an Empire carrier ship in the midst of a failed stealth mission. His mastery of the sword was the reason why some people called swordplay dancing, and his piloting was incredible, and he really seemed to like Keith even though Keith himself was still having a time trying to figure out why. Keith had said Lotor was unbelievable in a moment of exasperation, but the way Lotor made him feel . . . the way Lotor seemed to  _care_ for him . . . 

Keith kicked a soldier in the chest hard enough to slam him back into the wall, and to cause Keith to stumble back himself from the impact. His back hit Lotor’s, the two of them standing together in the middle of the crowd.

“It’s both,” he said.

“Hmm.” They had both locked blades with their respective opponents, but Keith looked over his shoulder just in time to see Lotor do the same. Lotor flashed him a smirk. “I’ll take it.” 

Keith grinned back.


End file.
